Supervisors delay decision on Gorman’s replacement

Residents of Legislative District 6 will have to wait for a few more days before they will find out who their next state senator will be.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors had scheduled a meeting on Feb. 4 to fill the Senate seat left vacant when Pamela Gorman resigned, but the meeting was called off the day before.
Cari Gerchick, the Board’s communications officer, said the supervisors needed additional time to evaluate the candidates.

State law doesn’t specify a deadline for county board members to select legislative replacements.

Earlier in the week, Republican precinct committee from District 6 nominated their district chairman, a party activist and a veteran committeeman as possible replacements for Gorman.
GOP Legislative District 6 Chairman David Braswell, activist Lori Klein and veteran committeeman Bob Haran were picked as the possible replacements during a two-hour meeting on Feb. 1.
Now it’s up to the supervisors to choose one of those three. Their options narrowed a bit on Feb. 2 when Haran announced that he would support Braswell.

“At the special election Monday night, Dave Braswell was clearly the first choice of the district, receiving 64 percent of the vote on the first ballot,” Haran said. “If the elected precinct committee had the sole power to appoint, they clearly would have, and in fact did, elect Dave Braswell as their choice.”

Although the precinct committee required to select three nominees, all were guaranteed a spot on the list because they were the only three nominated. A total of 125 precinct committeemen and proxies showed up for the meeting, which means a candidate had to get at least 63 votes in order to be included in the list of nominees.

Braswell was the first to get through with 80 votes, followed by subsequent votes for Klein and Haran.

Gorman resigned her seat on Jan. 25 to run for Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District. The seat is held by U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, who announced he will retire from Congress at the end of his term.

Maricopa County’s supervisors have at least one more legislative vacancy to fill.

An identical replacement process will take place in District 7 on Feb. 4. Jim Waring, the Phoenix Republican who represented the district in the Senate, resigned his legislative post last month to seek Shadegg’s seat.